Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates to a management apparatus and an image forming apparatus, particularly to a management apparatus used in an image forming system constituted of a plurality of image forming apparatuses and to an image forming apparatus provided with the management apparatus.
Description of the Related Art
There has been proposed a system including a plurality of image forming apparatuses such as MFPs (Multi-Functional Peripherals) connected to a network and being capable of printing in a ubiquitous manner. This system is also referred to as a ubiquitous printing system. For example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2009-015520, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2008-146437, and Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2005-223551 disclose various arts related to a printing system including a plurality of printers.
Further, since image forming apparatuses tend to have a server function along with the improvement in functions of image forming apparatus, the system tends to have no server. Such a system is also referred to as a serverless ubiquitous printing system.
In a serverless ubiquitous printing system, any of image forming apparatuses exhibits a server function and serves as a server. With respect to an image forming apparatus logged in by a user, the apparatus serving as a server gives a list of jobs issued by the user. Accordingly, the user can confirm at the image forming apparatus, to which he has logged in, jobs issued by himself and spooled to the image forming apparatus serving as a server and then give an instruction to print.
Such a system is often constructed, for example, in an office environment. Therefore, there is an increasing need to include a large number of image forming apparatuses in the system along with an extension of an office.
However, as the number of image forming apparatuses constituting the system increases, the number of image forming apparatuses enquired from an image forming apparatus logged in by a user a presence of spooling of jobs issued by the user increases. It causes an increased load on a communication within the system. Consequently, a throughput in the system is lowered disadvantageously.